Automated votes before 15 minutes are perfectly fine. It benefits everyone else because it puts a share of curation reward back into the pool. The idea is that if it is so obvious that content is worth many votes (for example, based on author track record) within a short time, it doesn't didn't take much skill or effort to identify, and doesn't deserve much curation reward, and that cost is better spent elsewhere. This is equally true whether those votes are automated or not, perhaps even more so if automated.
My view is that the 15 minutes should be much shorter. Automated votes can still do their job of putting funds back into the pool on the no-brainer votes and it would get out of the way of human voters for all other cases.